Weapons of Choice

I posted this today over on Chef Talk but though I would also add it here. I will try to remember to add some pictures.

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My previous career was in metal casting and I have a BS in metallurgical engineering. My perspective on knives may be a little different than everyone else's since I approach it from a metal and engineering view rather than a culinary view. Probably not right but some things I just can't shake.

In my opinion, a forged knife is hands down the best knife, ignoring brands, styles, size, etc. Of the forged knives I am a big fan of pattern welded steel often erroneously referred to as Damascus steel. Forging gives a knife wonderful strength, elasticity and crystal alignment that can't be done by stamping. The advantage of a pattern welded knife is that two or more different metals are forged together. At a microscopic level this gives a serrated edge with wonderful sharpness that in a sense re-sharpens itself as the edge wears since the different metals wear at different rates. My third favorite knife and quickly becoming my number one favorite is the sintered powder metal knife. Like the pattern welded knife it creates a microscopic serrated edge as it wears so it is brilliantly sharp. The fact that it is sintered allows for the use of some higher tech metals that are not available any other way.

I am opposed to buying a knife kit as I believe in buying the best knife for the job that is in my budget. My first knife was a Lamson-Sharp 10" Chef's Knife. GREAT knife. My only regret is that is isn't longer, but I didn't know that at the time. It's forged and made in the US. It didn't really come into its own until I began sharpening it myself with my two sided water stone and put a slightly narrower angle of edge on it. I use this knife every day in school and at home.

My second knife was a Nenohi Nenox G-Type Petty 5.9" (15cm) as I wanted to try one of the Japanese knives. This is a PM made knife and has an edge that boggles my mind. Some days I use this knife more than my chef's knife because it cuts so well and feels so good I don't want to put it down. This Japanese knife is a little harder to sharpen but once you get your technique down, it isn't a problem. One thing I learned from both of these knives is that sharpening them yourself will give you a better, sharper edge that lasts longer than what you got out of the box.

Third knife was a Ittosai Stain-Resistant Layered Steel Santoku 6.4" (16.5cm) as I wanted to try this new to me style and it was a pattern welded knife I could afford. Great knife but not as good as the other two. I really have not bonded well with this style but if I want to cut thin slices of onion, tomato or potatoes, this is a good one to use. But it normally stays at home rather than at school. Sharpness and edge retention is in between the Lamson and the Nenohi.

Next knife was a Glestain salmon slicer. I rarely use or require this knife but when I do, there is nothing better. Very sharp out of the box and I have not sharpened it yet. I am a little nervous about sharpening a 12" blade. Not sure as a culinary student when or if you would need to purchase one of these, definitely not at my school. It was a celebratory reward for myself.

Last knife I bought was a Misono Hankotsu for ripping up chickens. This was my first venture into single sided Japanese knives. This is a very heavy and menacing looking knife. Makes me feel like I should join the French Foreign Legion. While the edge out of the box is sharp, it isn't very good. It is not consistently sharp along the length of the edge. As before I think that sharpening this knife myself will get the maximum performance out of it. I just have not done it yet. I have to watch my DVD on sharpening first since I have never sharpened a single sided knife before.

For honing I use an F.Dick flat multi cut steel and highly recommend it. I don't do the razzle dazzle knife honing routine that every cook does. I think it is BS. I slowly pull the knife, at the proper angle, along the full length of the knife across the steel. After each pass I feel for a burr with my fingernail. If the burr moves to the other side then I hone that side. If I don't feel a burr on either side I don't bother honing the knife. I can usually hone a knife with three or four slow passes, though a knife that was used hard may need a few more. I hone them in the morning and then forget about it.

My recommendation for a first time purchase is to buy a good but not great nor cheap chef's knife, middle of the road. In my opinion, hands down, the Japanese steel is superior. But there is nothing wrong with the other's either. I highly recommend Lamson Sharp. Wustoff and Henckels are good too, but I would be sure they are forged. I have not been impressed with Dexter. Messermeister is better than Dexter. Regardless, this is a learning knife to learn technique, beat on, mess up sharpening, break the tips, etc. You won't be out much. Even an old Chicago knife is a good starter. Stay away from the cheap stamped Chinese crap. I don't like metal handles like Global but I think that is more of an individual preference, they are good knives. Buy a good steel and learn to use it. Buy at least a two sided stone and learn to use it, especially correct edge angle. I don't like oil at all but that is probably a personal preference. Do not ever ever ever rely on or use one of those pull sharpeners like fishermen use or an electric sharpener. Nothing will ruin your knife faster.

Soup Again

On Monday we were supposed to fabricate fish, meaning butcher and prepare. I was cautiously excited about this. Most of my life I have been fishing, though not for the past ten years. Growing up my Grandpa would take me out on Lake Erie by the Crib and we would fish for perch. Strangely, I never caught any perch, I always caught Sheepshead. No complaints here, they are a much bigger fish and more fun to catch. I loved collecting the luck stones from their heads. We'd be out all day and catch hundreds of perch. I was never involved in the cleaning but the adults would fill the freezers full of fish, never filleted mind you, always pan fried.

My Grandpa would also take us trout fishing at a duck and trout club he belonged to. Every year there was a fishing derby for kids that was a madhouse but often we went on quiet weekends. Since it was a stocked pond I would often catch my limit of trout.

And my family still maintains a cottage in Angola IN where I did most of my fishing growing up. Most of what we caught in Crooked Lake were blue gills(our place is just on the other side of the point, left of the X). We had the wire baskets that we would hang off the side of the dock to keep the fish alive that we caught. I would lay face down hanging over the side of the dock and clean my catch in the lake, scaling the fish right in the water with a spoon. Friends of ours two doors down taught me how to clean my own fish.

I did a lot of fishing in South Carolina. My friends and I mostly poached on farm ponds. I always thought we had permission, but in hindsight I'm not so sure. Often when we would fish with Clarence and he would haul a flat bottom jon boat in the back of his truck that the three of us would put around the pond with an electric trolling motor. It was in SC that I learned to fillet fish. I'm sad to say that I haven't fished since I left SC. Lack of access I guess. I need to do something about that since I need to get off my butt and take my daughter fishing.

In planning for fabricating fish I took my awesome Glestain salmon slicer with me to class. Unfortunately I don't have a fillet knife. But when I got to class I learned that the fish didn't come in. Instead we would be revisiting knife skills. Chef felt walking around the past few weeks that we really needed a refresher. I could not agree more. My skills aren't the best but at least I don't stand two feet away from the table with the knife held like a hammer hacking away at my vegetables. I'm just a slow slicer.

For once I worked by myself. Which was good. I saw no reason to crowd a table with knives slinging about. I'd walk around trying to figure where to put my cuts with people who had made similar cuts. It was kind of scary to see what people were doing. Amazingly every time I told a table that cut potatoes go in water I'd get the evil eye. I joked with Ridges that his table mates had nice brown potatoes.

Chef told us that one side of the class was going to make a cream soup and the other side was to make a stock based soup. Then each side was to divide in two groups. I aligned myself with Ridges' table which included Hottie #3 and Baby Face, who I find to be a prick and a half. He did not change my opinion of him.

Ridges suggested corn chowder. Sounded good to me. I was not in the mood to be a leader that day. Since we had been chopping up onion, celery and carrots we automatically had some mirepoix. Ridges and I agreed that we would get it cooked down and then strain it out like we did with the Mulligatawny soup. Baby Face and Hottie #3 were very anti-social, which I found unusual for Hottie since she is normally quite social with me. But BF is her best friend and I suppose that was his influence upon her. Somewhere our soup morphed as they both began dicing up potatoes to go into the soup. Ridges seemed perplexed but I went along with it.

I checked on the other side. RK had a couple gallons of frozen beef stock in a large brazier that he was chipping at with a chef's knife. Dude! I told him to knock the top of the ice block off and went to fetch a lid. After he had enough of the top chipped off I put the lid on and explained the ice would melt much faster with the lid on because you create a steam bath. Come on man! He seemed perplexed but later we were washing dishes and I had to stop him from taking the dishes out of the dish washer before they went through the rinse cycle. He said the washer had stopped. I said yes but it does a rinse cycle next, pointing to the digital readout that said "RINSING." You have to wait for it to finish rinsing off the soap and sanitizer before you take them out. I'm not sure he understood me so it's no surprise he didn't understand why I put the lid on.

Next thing I knew BF and Hottie were chopping up Italian sausage. WTF? This is like no corn chowder I've every heard of. Then they wanted to roast it in beer. Huh? Roast it in beer? I have never heard of roasting sausage in beer. Boiling in beer, yes. I went to Wisconsin. We eat brats and drink Miller at 8:00 AM waiting for kickoff, but roasting? Of course they all treated me like I was the dumb ass. Of course roasting! Whatever. Oh to be 20 again.

Looking at the mirepoix, there was nothing to drain the vegetables out of. I suggested to Ridges that we add a quart of cream to the vegetables and let it simmer awhile for flavor and then we would have something to strain. So the soup came together like this: we strained the mirepoix out, added the strained cream to the 2 quarts we had simmering on the back burner, added the potatoes, added the sausage sans beer (who thinks beer and milk go together?), seasoned it all and let it simmer until the potatoes were tender.

I guess we ended up with potato and sausage soup. It was really good, though I'm not sure that the sage in the sausage really went well. I'm not sure why Hottie #3 picked that sausage. There were three other sausages in the freezer but I don't think she looked that hard. Mouth and the Sushi Boys made some kind of cream of chicken with bacon. It was pretty good too, as good as ours I would say. On the other side, Bar Code and his lap dogs made something like minestrone which I did not care for. MILF and Hottie #2's group made a vegetable beef soup that was good but the meat was too tough. They needed to braise the meat longer or better yet use a pressure cooker. MILF said that was exactly what the book called for. Good prediction on my part!

...Now It Cuts Like A Knife, But It Feels So Right...

Day two of class was knife skills. Which is funny because day two of my first quarter was knife skills, but I guess everybody needs a refresher.

Before we could start cutting we had to unpack some new equipment, wash it and put it away. I am finding it smart to often play stupid. Many of the other students believe that since this is their second quarter and they have not seen me before that I'm a newbie. I just don't remember some things or we did things differently. Example, I couldn't figure out how to get the sanitizer to work. Our MILF said that it only takes a drop and Chef concurred. Ok, I didn't remember. Too my credit though the low battery light was on. But when I asked why they weren't using the dish washer and doing everything by hand I was returned with a look of a deer caught in the headlights by Hottie #2. I am a dish washing machine so I jumped in a cranked a few racks through.

One of the items unpacked was a dozen paring knives from Dexter. I grabbed a basket to run them through the dishwasher and MILF stopped me saying knives had to be hand washed. I asked why, knowing that running twelve paring knives through the dishwasher was much safer and that Dexter knives are made to run through dishwashers. Her smart ass reply was if I had read my book last night like I was supposed to, I would know. Ok, I'll bite, I did read the book, but again why? Because dishwashers wil ruin the handles and dull the knives. OK, true enough, but these are Dexters! I'll ask Chef. I came back, said it was OK with these particular knives. I learned long time ago, play dumb, let people feel like they are in control and feelings don't get hurt. I like MILF by the way.

Next we watched some knife skills videos. I am starting to wonder if people with ADD are drawn to be cooks? My class is older and more professional than the kids I was with before but as soon as Chef went to his office, people started talking, goofing off and then fast forwarding the video so we didn't have to watch as much. The NEVER happened when I was in college. I wished they hadn't. There was one really good section on sharpening that got skipped over. These people will struggle with sharp knives for a while.

We set up in a long assembly line which was strange because with the kids we used both sides of the kitchen and had some elbow room. We were supposed to practice all of our cuts, batonette, julienne, brunoise, dice, lozenge, roll cuts, etc. I didn't bother with tourné since I don't have a tourné knife and I didn't bring a short paring knife with me. I bring my own knives. I don't bother with the knife roll if I don't have to since 90% of the time all we need is a cook's knife and a paring knife. For me it is quite simple, I don't trust someone else's sharpening skills. I sharpen my own knives. I know they are sharp. If I cut myself it will be my own fault, not because I trusted someone else's dull knife. Usually I bring my cook's knife, my petty knife and sometimes my santoku knife. Now I wish my cook's knife was about two inches longer, but doesn't everybody.

Mouth was at the end of the table, she's a lefty. And a constant complainer. Several times I heard her say she hates this class. Why are you here then! She has a nice knife though.

The Kid was on my left. This guy is like 4' 8" and drives a big 'ol (1970 something) beat up pick up truck with a huge blower scoop on the hood. He's serious but he massacred an onion. I tried to show him how to cut it correctly rather than just hacking away at it. He was using his paring knife. He was shocked when I said that his knife was dull. It's brand new! Yeah, well, that doesn't mean that the company sent it to you fully sharp. I like The Kid.

On my right were Sushi One and Sushi Two. These guys both work at a steak and sushi place down the road. Young guys but committed. They take copious notes. Deja vu with my last class, Sushi One asked me for help with his cuts. I showed him how his tomato would bend under the knife before cutting, a sure sign of a dull knife. I let him try my knives to see the difference. He just needs more practice with the sharpener.

We cut up potatoes, onions, and carrots. A few of us did a chiffonade on some cabbage and minced some garlic. A few others diced up some celery. We all had to dice some Roma tomatoes. Some were diced some were mangled. Chef threw it all into the big steam-jacket pot with some water for a vegetable soup. When it was ready everyone grabbed huge bowls. I grabbed a coffee cup and asked Bar Code to fill it half way. I don't like vegetable soup but felt it was important to taste it. It was actually pretty good but that doesn't make me a fan.

Next week is sauces and stocks. If we get to pick a sauce I want to make a velouté sauce, first step to poutine!